XP can be tuned pretty well, and if this is a new machine, you should have no problem getting low latencies with larger projects. If it's the interface of XP that throws you, that can be made to look like 2000 with the click of a radio button.

[edit]- check out the "slimming down windows", as well as several other threads in this forum for windows for tips on getting everything you want back.

I would definitely recommend XP. It's a fairly straight forward process to lock it down and clean it up. There are numerous very detailed guides to controlling the interface and keeping it lean and mean._________________What makes a space ours, is what we put there, and what we do there.

Yeah. XP, tune it, strip it, keep it off-line, there are lots of good guides on this.

Basically what JKS and Uncle said. If you're not comfortable with striping it at least disable the graphical effects and take a broom to the "services" settings. If you can afford to (have a second computer to browse) keep it off-line then disable/delete hogs like virus scanners and fire-walls.

It's actually a pritty nice OS but it needs some care._________________Kassen

Another thing to consider. Rolling back the operating system to a previous version may cause waranty issues. You also take the chance that drivers for all of your hardware may not be available for Win 2K. I would also recommend sticking with XP and tweaking it to your needs. Eventually, support for an operating system dies away. Win 2K will lose support long before XP if it hasn't already.

I'm perfectly content with my toolbox, which I have finetuned to run on W2K. So no reason to change that.

If I reckon the problems I remember coming along on several forums after the introduction of XP, it was mainly
about complicated settings of user rights, and the continuous popping up of all kind of M$ messages.

I haven't actually checked out Tweak UI XP, so I can't give an opinion on that, but I'd definitely steer clear of any application which stays resident after installing. Anything which runs in the background will just hog resources and complicate the streamlining of everything else.
The easiest way to tell how well streamlined an XP setup is (IMHO) is to press Ctrl+Alt+Del and have a look in Task Manager how many processes are running. (bottom left hand corner)

I rate it like this:-
less than 20 Smokin!
20 to 25 Nicely tuned machine
25 to 30 Getting there
30 to 35 A bit of bloat
35+ Your CPU and RAM are looking after someone else's agenda! _________________What makes a space ours, is what we put there, and what we do there.

This is simple; you can only get those messages if there's a process to generate them and they have been turned on at all. By the time I'm done with a XP install neither is true. I forgot where it is but there's a registry setting that simply disables the OS's ability to pop up those messages at all.

I think you can do all of what those programs do yourself with the management of processes and some registry editing and various settings.

Quote:

Running W2K and sometimes updating apps made in XP-dialog-style almost never caused any problems.

Well, if it works for you then go. The main point of XP right now is drivers and stability. If your setup doesn't need any drivers that affect this then W2K could make sense. I have no real oppion on it, I went straight from 98 to XP._________________Kassen

A nice list, Uncle Krunkus .. I'm obviously smokin' (anyway).
And lately I found a nice free tool for further trimming of the boot : Startuprun at Nirsoft.

Kassen wrote:

you can do all of what those programs do yourself with the management of processes and some registry editing and various settings.

I fully agree. I know my ways too in the meantime.
But if I'm uncertain about someone's skills, I will not quickly advise to poke around in the registry for example.
Talking about unstable. I once made the jump from 3.11 to NT 4.0 ...

2 Blue Hell
If using a laptop a battery monitor is quite useful, so that wouldn't be my first priority to remove.
That's more something like the clock.
If I look at that list I think I see quite some applications of which I suppose they have nothing to do with the boot-process.
Is 'MultiZap' really necessary ? Even FireFox is not part of the OS.
I don't think it's a matter of 'killing' anything, but just remove it from the taskbar at boot.
The programs are still available in some way if you like to activate them on a certain moment later on.
Do you use 'TFricKy.exe' all the time during a daily session ?

Of course services like 'svchost.exe' shouldn't be disabled, because things would go wrong.
But here the fact that there is a duplicate of this one in the list, starts being questionable, and probably could be removed.
Suppose you're working for hours on your set with some wav-files to make some proper mix for example.
What's the purpose of having loaded a browser all that time ?

In fact, when looking at services at startup, it's not only a matter of disabling or not, like in the Ctrl+Alt+Del dialog.
When going to Configuration/System management/Services one is offered 3 options instead of 2.
a) Automatic - it will be loaded at boot.
b) Manual - the service will be loaded on the moment the relevant application is activated.
c) Switched off - No load at all.

So mode b) is a possible escape to drastic decisions, to see if anything still functions well in the order of time._________________0.618033988

Like multizap is my remote volume control for the sound card on another computer, the apache webserver is used for testing web stuff - I use it often, hh.exe was running because I had the PHP help open. There are four or five processes used for the wireless connection, some four or five for the virus scanner ... the tfncky thingy is used, I need it to brighten and dim the display, it needs to be dimmed at night at brightened during day time .. and that tool in turn needs the TCtrlIoHook thingie.

The various svchosts are running different network tasks, and they are started by windows as needed ... the battery monitor is not that useful for me as I run my laptops mains powered nearly always. I could kill a few others, not that many really.

A lot of this would not be needed for a music workstation that is not connected to the internet and that would be the main optimization thing IMO. Laptops tend to run more processes than workstations anyway, out of the box that is.

On the other hand there is not really a reason to worry too much about a lot of processes running as long as they consume little resources. My main resource hog usually is firefox ... which would not need to be running when making music. Firefox must be restarted every once in a while anyway ...

The other performance bottleneck is the hard disk, especially when it's well filled - keep hard disks empty!

This particular laptop uses no memory sharing for the video card, and that's a very good idea.

To go back to processes ... I'd like to recommend process explorer originally made by sysinternals, and although microsoft took over that company the tools are still available and not altered - it will show you the dependencies between the various running tasks. Like that System started smss which started crss which started winlogon which started services which started apache which started apache etc. It also tells me that on that same laptop there are 707 threads running using 11515 handles, what dll's are used etc.

I could use some tool to manage processes in groups, for instance when I don't need the wireless network I could kill like four or five processes, but once I did I have to think very hard which ones to turn on again to have the wireless link active again .. I could reboot of course, but why not dynamically manage such sets. Sort of hardware profiles, but then for processes and not for devices.

The whole idea of reducing he number of running processes seems to be based on the idea of using the computer for one purpose .. and I don't do that, I write software, I develop web stuff and I make music .. sometimes I need wireless sometimes not and it's just too clumsy now to reconfigure everything when I change my focus .. so I start up more._________________Jan

A lot of this would not be needed for a music workstation that is not connected to the internet

Why being connected to some network, while editing a local WAV-file?

Quote:

..seems to be based on the idea of using the computer for one purpose ..

This may be the crux in the differences of taste between users :
Do you want a system which is multi-tasking at every moment, or dedicated to a function from one to the next?

Reducing processes doesn't necessarely would lead to one function by the way. It has more to do with efficiency.
'Elegant programming' as E.W.Dijkstra called it.
Why having an electric drill machine turning all day, in case you want to drill a hole in the wall ?_________________0.618033988

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